This WMD Biological Warfare is definitely the worst crime case of systematic biological massacre against Humanity committed by a country in our Human History.

"The fellow knew that it was over for him, and so he didn't struggle." recalled the old former medical assistant of a Japanese Army unit in China in World War II, "But when I picked up the scalpel that's when he began screaming. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped." The former medical assistant who insisted on anonymity, explained the reason for the vivisection. The Chinese prisoner had been deliberately infected with the plague as part of a research project.

Imperial Japan's biological killing fields are a lost chapter of history that the full horror of which is only recently been exposed and understood in all its enormity.

Japan set up Headquarters of Unit 731 in Ping Fan near Harbin and Unit 100 in ChangChun, and Mukden, now called SunYang, in China to develop plague bombs for use in WWII. The base was disguised as Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Unit. The complex in Ping Fan was completed in 1939, contained more than 150 buildings, including 2 secret prisons and 3 crematoria, and was the largest WMD Biological Weapon research center in the world.

After infecting him, the researchers decided to cut him open alive, tear him apart, organ by organ, to see what the disease does to a man's inside. Often no anesthetic was used, he said, out of concern that it might have an effect on the results.

From July 1993 to Dec. 1994, the "Unit 731 Exhibition" toured Japan and presented at 61 locations over the course of one and half year. It had sent shockwaves throughout Japan. Hal Gold had collected many testimonies in his book "Unit 731: Testimony; Japan's Wartime Human Experimentation and the Post-War Cover-Up". One of the testimonies was provided by an aged former Japanese doctor Kurumizawa Masakuni :

The Chinese woman victim had regained her consciousness while being vivisected alive.
" She opened her eyes. "
" And then ? "
" She hollered. "
" What did she say ? "
Kurumizawa could not answer, then began weeping feebly and murmured,
" I don't want to think about it again. "
The interviewee apologized, waited a few seconds, and tried again for an answer.
He gave it though sobs.
" She said, "It's all right to kill me, but please spare my child's life."

Japanese Dr. Kanisawa testified in NBC Dateline "Factory of Death: Unit 731" in Aug. 15, 1995, the live un-anesthetized dissection was a routine common practice in all units.

"The 1st time, I was very hesitant to do what I was told to do.
The 2nd time, you get used to it.
The 3rd time, you more or less volunteered."

Yoshio Shinozuka, a former member of Unit 731 said "The first time, my legs were shaking so badly I could hardly stand up". He knew the person on the operating table, " At the vivisection, I could not meet his eyes because of the hate he had in his glare at me."

"We called the victims ‘logs’," he said, "We didn’t want to think of them as people. We didn’t want to admit that we were taking lives. So we convinced ourselves that what we were doing was like cutting down a tree. When you see someone in that state, you just can’t move. Your mind goes blank. The fear is overwhelming." said Yoshio.

Unit 731 & Unit 100 were comprised of over 3,000 researchers and technicians. It was a gigantic research center focused on WMD Biological Weapons - the world's most technically advanced at the time, used human as the guinea pigs, known as marutas (logs). The Japanese told the locals that the facilities were lumber mills.

The Ping Fan facility alone could monthly "manufacture as much as 300 kg of plague bacteria... 500-600 kg of anthrax germs, 800-900 kg typhoid, paratyphoid, or dysentery germs, or as much as 1000 kg of cholera germs." If several different diseases were manufactured simultaneously, then the total production of pathogens could be many times higher.

A former member of Unit 731 testified that "to eliminate any chance of leaking out the secret of construction of the 'Square Buildings' by the laborers, they are all sent to special prison and used as the first batch of test objects."

More than 10,000 Chinese, Korean and Russian PoWs were slaughtered in these biological experiments.

The vivisection was routinely used for practicing various kinds of surgery says Dr. Ken Yuasa, a former Japanese doctor working in China during the War. First an appendectomy, then an amputation of an arm and finally a tracheotomy. When they finished practicing, they killed the victim with an injection. Morimura Seiichi describes in explicit details of vivisection in his book "The Devouring Monster".

Medical researchers also locked up diseased prisoners with healthy ones, to see how readily various diseases would spread.

To determine how much pressure the body can withstand, some were put inside a pressure chamber would suffer terrible agony before their eyes pop out from their sockets and blood forced out through their skin.

Marutas were denied food or water to determine the maximum length of survival, or mummified alive in total dehydration experiments. Some were put into hot water and gradually increase the temperature to study degree of burns and the relationship between temperature and survival.

To determine the treatment of frostbite, prisoners were taken outside in freezing weather and left with exposed arms, periodically drenched with water until frozen solid. The arm was later amputated, the doctors would repeat the process on the victim's upper arm to the shoulder. After both arms were gone, the doctors moved on to the legs until only a head and torso remained. The victim was then used for plague and pathogens experiments.

Victims were burned with flamethrowers, blown up with shrapnel, bombarded with lethal doses of X-ray, spun to death in centriguges, injected with animal blood, air bubbles, exposure to syphilis, surgical removal of stomachs with the esophagus then attached to the intestines, amputation of arms and reattachment on the opposite side, gassed to death in chambers .......

The doctors experimented on children and babies, even three-day-old baby measuring the temperature with a needle stuck inside the infant's middle finger to keep it straight to prevent the baby's hand clenching into a fist.

Victims were often taken to a proving ground called Anda, where they were tied to stakes and bombarded with test weapons to see how effective the new technologies were. Planes sprayed the zone with a plague culture or dropped bombs with plague-infected fleas to see how many people would die.

White-coated Japanese medics claiming to be from a government epidemic-prevention unit would arrive saying that they were there to implement hygiene measures or to administer vaccinations. After they left, the villages would become sick.

The Japanese army regularly conducted "Field Tests". Planes dropped plague-infected fleas over Ningbo in eastern China and over Changde in north-central China.

Japanese troops dropped cholera and typhoid cultures in water reservoirs, wells and ponds.

Cottony material and feathers coated with anthrax bacteria were used to spread the disease in an airborne manner, as such fibers had been found to be effective in keeping the bacteria alive long enough to reach the intended human victims.

Witnesses recall watching Japanese airplanes dropping a mixture of wheat, millet, soy beans, rice, cotton fibers, paper and fabric cuttings, aerial spraying pathogens over the cities . They all had been coated with the biological organism or with fleas and brought the germs to people.

Japanese distributed infected food, cakes, drink, clothes and children's candies to the locals.

The same mass infections were being repeated all over China.

"Glanders was a disease first found in horses, and it could attack human beings," said Furmanski. Human beings' legs are most affected by the disease. "Only one out of 20 people with the disease could survive.

Medical records showed that glanders had virtually been wiped out in 1906, but new cases suddently broke out in the 1940s during WWII in China."

Even today, one hard-hit village in Zhejiang still bears the nickname "Rotten-Leg Village" because so many older residents are scarred by glanders from the 1942 attacks. Their flesh are still rotten and have not been healed since they were attacked - they have been suffering for almost 60 years now.

Sheldon H. Harris, a historian at California State University and author of the book, "Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932-45 and the American Cover-up" stressed that "My calculation, which is very conservative, and based on incomplete sources as the major archives are still closed, is that 10,000 to 12,000 human beings were exterminated in lab experiments".

Outside the 731 prisons, the "Field Tests" were carried out all over China including Manchuria.

Scholars believe that the toll from Japanese-seeded cholera epidemics in the southern province of Yunnan alone may reach the staggering figure of 200,000 killed in May 1942.

3 months later, another 200,000 die in Shandong province as a result of Unit 731’s germ warfare. In the Zhekiang province city of Quzhou alone, over 50,000 perished from bubonic plague and cholera .............

As the war was ending, Japanese purposely released all the plague-infected animals. The Northeastern China immediately became a disaster area and caused outbreaks of plague that killed at least another 30,000 people from 1946 - 1948.

It is also called by some as the Asian Auschwitz of Unit 731.

In 1987, based on first-hand reports of the atrocities, T.F. Mous made a grisly film : The Man Behind the Sun (also called Black Sun 731).

" There could be over 700,000 or even 1,000,000" lives lost to Japan's biowarfare program" said Daniel Barenblatt, author of new book A Plague Upon Humanity: The Secret Genocide of Axis Japan's Germ Warfare Operation.

These crimes are more than parallel to the coeval work of Joseph Mengele and the Nazi doctors.

Japanese military scientists killed 12 times the number of civilians as did the Nazi's Angel of Death - Dr. Josef Mengele.

Nazi doctors were held accountable for their crimes in the famous 1947 "Nuremberg Doctors Trials", but there were NO comparable "Japanese Doctors Trials".

The research was kept secret after the war in part because the U.S. granted immunity from war crimes prosecution to the Japanese doctors in exchange for their data and helped covering up the human experiment - An act utterly ignoring international laws and against Humanity.

On May 6 1947, in a radio message to Washington, MacArthur urged the combined US military and State Department group which supervised occupation policy in Japan to give "In Writing" immunity to Ishii and all others involved in the Japanese Germ Warfare and Human experiments.

On Dec 27 1949, MacArthur’s Headquarters announced to the world "that the Japanese had done some experimentation with animals, but that there was no evidence they ever had used human beings."

NGO The Sunshine Project has discovered that even today US is still actively developing Biological and Chemical Weapon. On 24 Sept. 2002 Sunshine Project provides evidence for US Military Secret Chemical Weapons Program violating international law.

U.S. itself in 1943 also set up a major Biological Warfare program with 3,500 people at Camp Detrick, now Fort Detrick, in Frederic, MD. Instead of putting the ringleaders on trial, U.S. gave them stipends to gain some advantages in the WMD Biological Weapon.

On Aug. 13, 1985, British Independent Televison broadcast a documentary "Unit 731 - Did the Emperor Know ? ". It was producted by Peter Williams and David Wallace after years research, hinted broadly that Emperor Hirohito was aware of the human experiments. There was also an interview with retired Lt. Col. Murray Sanders, the first US investigator into Unit 731. Sanders claimed that Gen. Douglas MacArthur authorized him to make a deal with the Japanese if they cooperated with US Biological Warfare scientists.

The producers even sent a copy of the documentary film to the Japanese officials in London.

Murray Sanders was also interviewed by NBC Dateline "Factory of Death: Unit 731" in Aug. 15, 1995 said "It was a mistake for the criminal Japanese to have been pardoned."

William and Wallace also published the book " Unit 731: The Japanese Army's Secret of Secrets". For some reason, a chapter was omitted from the American edition. The chapter was titled " Korea War". They examined evidences from the International Scientific Commission for the Facts Concerning Bacterial Warfare in Korea and supported the theory of US-Japanese culpability of using Unit 731's germ techniques in Korean War.

The same conclusion was also reached by Professor Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman, author of 1998 book "The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the early cold war and Korea", that "United States had an operational biological weapons system, and that it was employed in the Korea War."

Takai Matsumura, Japanese historian and economist at Tokyo's Keio University, said Japanese WMD Biological Warfare experiments were conducted in at least 10 other cities in China, including Hailar, Harbin, ChangChun, SunYang, Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, as well as Singapore, Burma, Rangoon, Bangkok, possibly in Manila, East Indies.

U.S. silence on this issue has allowed the Japanese Government to maintain the fiction that there is not enough evidence to prove that the Chinese are telling the truth. When Japanese journalists and academics have stumbled over crucial validating evidence in government archives, the material has been confiscated and re-classified.

When neither Japan nor U.S. are prepared to admit to either the crimes or cover-up, a small group of conscientious Japanese human rights activists, doctors, lawyers and former soldiers formed an un-precedented alliance with the Chinese.

Senior Japanese lawyers are acting for the Chinese, among them Tsuchiya Koken, the former president of the Japanese Lawyers Association. Few old Japanese soldiers who worked on the biological warfare programme have also come forward to give evidence. Their stance exposes themselves to abuse at home and accusations from ultra-nationalists that they are traitors.

"The brutality my parents generation committed in the name of war has to be resolved and addressed by my generation." said Keichiro Ichinose, one of the Japanese lawyers.

In June 1996, they formed the Association to Reveal the Historical Fact of Germ Warfare by the Japanese Armed Forces.

In 1997, 108 survivors and family members, including Wu Shi-Gen, filed a lawsuit against the Japanese Government demanding apology and 10 million yen compensation per victim of biological weapons and acts of brutality. The thousands of victims included 2,100 civilians, whose personal details have been verified in China.

In October 1940, Japanese warplanes that had passed over Wu Shi-Gen's village in Quzhou, southern China, but the bombs dropped did not explode. From them poured a mixture of rice and wheat covered with fleas. Few days later, many villagers were struck down by sickness. His nine year old brother had bubonic plague.

It is an agonising disease glands swell to the size of grapefruit, limbs fill with fluid and whole areas of flesh turn deep purple. Eventually, victims die screaming. The plague killed his two-year-old sister, too.

Ms. Wang Xuan is called by some as " The Joan of Arc of China". She was interviewed by PBS and BBC for their documentary films, including: "Unit 731: Nightmare in Manchuria", "Rotten Foot Village" and the most recent "Avoiding Armageddon".

She used to live in rural village called Yiwu on China's east coast. She shows visitors the Tragedy Pavilion which lists 1,500 plague victims, and describes how Unit 731 dropped plague-infected fleas from aircraft and killed 20 villagers a day at one point in 1942. She then leads visitors through the gray-brick Buddhist temple where the Japanese performed autopsies to gauge the impact of their biological tests.

Ms. Wang has assembled 180 Chinese victims and is now suing Japan, charging that Japan had spread bubonic plague and other diseases in China during WWII.

Eisuke Matsui, Japanese Professor of radiology at Gifu University school of Medicine, said he was compelled to uncover Japan's germ warfare in order to educate the young generation of Japan.

Japanese military training leader of Unit 731, Tomobuchi testifed in NBC Dateline Aug. 15, 1995 "Factory of Death: Unit 731" that he participated in July 1945, in training kamikaze pilots for "Sakura at Night" (flowers at night), a secret military plan to use five submarines, each carrying few small aircraft to the California coast where they would attack San Diego with "plague bombs" full of infected fleas.

"They were logs to me," said Toshimi Mizobuchi, former Unit 731 member and now a real estate manager living outside the Japanese city of Kobe, "Logs were not considered to be human. They were either spies or conspirators." As such, he said, "they were already dead. So now they die a second time. We just executed a death sentence." He said reunion for the several hundred veterans of Unit 731 was held almost every year. He had organized one of the reunion.

As the war was ending, Japan waited and intended to use plague germs if American had landed on Okinawa. Ironically, Okinawa themselves never knew the plan until Jan. 1994 when the Unit 731 Exhibition opened there. Ito Kageaki recalled, " Okinawa could be thrown away if Japan could gain some military advantage." One local said, "This makes the sacrifices in the Okinawa Battle even more pitiful."

Okinawa Battle had killed approx. 100,000 Japanese soldiers (including local Okinawa conscripts), 12,000 US soldiers, and 100,000 - 150,000 Okinawans civilians, i.e. more people died in the Battle of Okinawa than the Atomic Bombs of Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined.

An military order was also issued by the Japanese commander of the 32nd Army Headquarters: "Only standard Japanese is to be spoken. Anyone speaking the Okinawan dialect is to be executed as a spy." The Okinawan culture were oppressed and people were forced into the war by Japan.

Japanese historian Ishihara Masaie has pointed out the following factors contributing to the unusual high Okinawa civilian deaths by Japanese Army:

1. Okinawa civilians were tortured and killed as spies by Japanese.
2. Okinawa civilians were forced or made believed into "Group Suicides" (shûdan jiketsu). They were brain-washed and believed they would be tortured, raped and killed if fall into the hands of enemy. They either took their own lives directly with the distributed hand grenades, cyanide, jumped off the Suicide Cliff, or were killed by family member, close relative or friend as part of a group effort at self-annihilation.

It was for this reason that Japanese historian Ienaga Saburo argued that number of Okinawa civilians killed by the Japanese Army should also included the large number of "Group Suicides".

Kinjo Shigeaki, an Okinawa boy who had just turned 16 at war time, describes a typical scene in the book "Japan at War: An Oral History". He described a man "had that stick in his hands, he turned into a madman. Striking his wife and children over and over again, bludgeoning them to death. That was the beginning of the tragedy I saw. As if by a chain reaction, it spread from one family to the next. We all must die that way. Everyone seemed to think so. People began to raise their hands against their loved ones......."

"My memory tells me the first one we laid hands on was Mother. Those who had blades, or scythes, cut their wrists or severed arteries in their necks. Be we didn't do it that way. We might have used a string. When we raised our hands against the mother who bore us, we wailed in our grief. I remember that. In the end we must have used stones. To the head. We took care of mother that way. Then my brother and I turned on our younger sister. Hell engulfed us there........"

When the Battle of Okinawa was ending, no wonder the surrender of large numbers of Japanese soldiers was so shocking to the Okinawa civilians in disbelief.

3. Okinawa civilians were driven out of their shelters by Japanese army.
4. Okinawa civilians were robbed of their food by Japanese army.
5. Japanese soldiers poisoned, stabbed, or strangled many small Okinawa children to death to prevent their noise of alerting US forces to their locations. Japanese soldier often pointed rifle at Okinawan mother and ordered her to kill her baby.

6. Okinawa civilians were forced evacuations to malaria-infested areas by Japanese.
7. Japanese moved their military command posts to areas occupied by the Okinawa civilian evacuees.

I remember the presentations by NBC as to the Unit 731 and the medical expirmentaion by the Japanese during WWII. I would also add the horrors of the treatment of POW's by the Japanese, like in the Battan Death March, forcing them into slave labor (mainly in mines operated by companies like Mitsubishi), the obscene acts the Japanese did to the Chinese, like the 'Rape of Nanking' and to other locals in the Phillipines.
Even today, the Chinese people and Government try to miminise doing business with the Japanese, including for example buying few Japanese brand automobiles.
More disturbing was that many of the 'doctors' who were with Unit 731 and related medical experimental units became respected citizens after the war with some becoming involved with drug companies in Japan.
The fear of the spread of the USSR into Japan and the beginnings of the cold war after WWII meant we did deals and treaties not to proscute as much as we did to Nazi Germany or to protect people from civil and criminal liability. Part of that may have guilt been because of the use of he Nuke bombs. These treaties have also prevent US and other surviving POW's of the Japanese from suing the existing companies in Japan that profited from their enslavement in mines and factories. Another issue is that the Japanese didn't document as well, and of course in a language that was understood by many in the USA as was German, so records of what happened or determining such was much more difficult.
While we hear often on the History Channel and in schools in the USA and elsewhere of the Nazi Holocaust, the Japanese beheavors as noted were just as bad.

Quoting L-188 (reply 4):I just hope the uncovering of the unit's activites doesn't turn into an anti-us...Why the hell didn't they stop it/Prosecute it/release it international tirade.

I don't see it turning into an anti-US thread, but I'm surprised someone hasn't already blamed it on Bush . . .

Seriously, I am rather taken aback by the lack of response on this thread condemning the Japanese for these atrocities . . . afterall, the US surely got beat up for the two bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima . . . quite quickly . . . surely not by everyone, and there were two great threads on that subject . . . but the usual anti-US haters were there . . . don't see them posting here though do you.

I am curious what PacificJourney and a few other Japanese A-Netters have to say about Unit 731.

I'm part Okinawan so I guess this will have to do for now... However, I would also be very curious to see a Japanese view on WWII since being raised in the US would offer a different perspective on the issue.
I've been very disappointed with the way Japan has handled its acts in WWII. While Germany has been pretty open about things and has formed good relations with its neighbors, Japan has tried to keep things hush and tensions are present between Japan and its neighbors (specifcally China and Korea). What's disturbing is the lack of education for Japanese students on WWII, which keeps current and future Japanese generations from understanding Japan's aggression in the past and victimizes Japan. I found the parts about Okinawa interesting in the article in particular since I have heard of Japan's past attempts at eradicating Okinawa's (distinct) culture and its other acts on the island during the war. Fortunately, these attempts have failed and Okinawan culture is still very much alive.

Japanese society has a serious denial problem when it comes to the events of WWII. When I was in college, I took a course in modern Japanese history, and our professor showed us a current Japanese history textbook used in their public high-schools. The section on WWII was limited almost entirely to a discussion of the atomic attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He said the omission was more out of shame and embarrassment than a concerted effort to avoid and accept responsibility, but it still strikes me as acutely dishonest.

Many historians suggest that Japanese atrocities, committed primarily in China and Manchuria, were possibly as extensive as those committed by Germany although they were not as systematic and organized. I say “possibly” because there was no accurate population census data for most of these areas and the Japanese kept no precise “body-count” data like the Germans did. Even with that consideration, we are still talking about millions of civilian deaths over and above those that could be attributed to collateral damage from combat operations.

Even by 1945, after the Japanese Empire had been significantly reduced in size, approximately 150,000 civilians per month were dying in China, Manchuria, Indochina, Formosa, and the other areas occupied by Japan. Most of these deaths were from starvation and disease associated with forced labor rather than outright execution, but I expect that is of little consolation to the victims.

I'm still amazed - and damn near insulted - that no one has weighed in on this. Especially those that were so goddamn ready to comdemn the US for it's nuclear weapons use in WW2. What a bunch of hypocritical SOBs you all turned out to be.

Several of us - and speaking only for myself - held very long, intelligent, well intentioned conversations with you, and you all - and you KNOW damn well who you are - haven't the balls to weigh on this.

Eviseration while alive and awake - experiements on 3 month old children and pregnant women.

And don't even get me started on the FIRST use of WMD . . . let me see if I get this right - BEFORE the US dropped the bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima the Japanese were dropping BIO weapons????

Haaaaa - don't ever, ever try to lecture me on the poor goddamned Japanese citizen in Nagasaki or Hiroshima again.

I'll qualify myself be saying my first wife - RIP - is Japanese, she passed away on our 5th anniversary 20 years ago . . . and I guarantee she would NOT have approved.

Quoting Ariis (reply 10):y were all Japanese, but they were different people. If that matters to you.

Oh, but my dear Sir, it matters to me a great, great, deal! I want to know what our japanese Friends who have thus greatly insutiated that we are essentiallty "monsters" have to say. That the US was the first users of WMD. One word . . BULLSHIT.

My friend, your Country Flag says "Poland". By this I must assume you've been to Auschweitz, Buchenwald, etc. I pity you sir, and that that you, and your generations must have endured.

I can show you a photo of a poor old 101 year old woman in Alabama, who passed this world in Jan 2003, with a long number tatooed on her wrist. . . .

That would be my Grandmother. I neither seek nor desire sympathy for that, "DD Granny would have beat my butt for that . . . .

If you have anything else to say to me on death, death camps, and the like, I'll talk to you til you can't stand up straight . . . . .

I'm still amazed - and damn near insulted - that no one has weighed in on this. Especially those that were so goddamn ready to comdemn the US for it's nuclear weapons use in WW2. What a bunch of hypocritical SOBs you all turned out to be.

You've already made your mind up, hijacked this thread, and anyone who says anything you don't agree with in the slightest will get lambasted by you. What's the point?

Quoting ANCFlyer (reply 3):initial appearances are that the Germans in WW2 might have been second rate at killing and torture compared to Unit 731

Well, if you'd know the history of the holocaust, then you'd know that the majority of the people that died were used as workers. To the death, but they were used in a "constructive"" way. Yes, there were medical experiments. Most of them were for research (some of them to SAVE lives), most of them to try and prove the ideology.
I do not want to belittle any of their deaths, it's just not legit to compare these two issues.

Quoting Ushermittwoch (reply 15):To the death, but they were used in a "constructive"" way. Yes, there were medical experiments. (...) (some of them to SAVE lives). I do not want to belittle any of their deaths, it's just not legit to compare these two issues.

I'm afraid you're doing exactly that..belittling their deaths! Do you actually believe that killing a person by gas is somewhat different from killing them using exhaustion, freezing etc., just because they helped build some Autobahns??? And the experiments of Dr. Mengele and the other so-called doctors are by NO MEANS different from what the Japanese did!! You can't be serious!!

The sheer fact that another nation did killings, too, that went way beyond the human imagination, does certainly NOT render the German Holocaust "second-rate"!

Quoting Ushermittwoch (reply 15):Well, if you'd know the history of the holocaust, then you'd know that the majority of the people that died were used as workers. To the death, but they were used in a "constructive"" way. Yes, there were medical experiments. Most of them were for research (some of them to SAVE lives), most of them to try and prove the ideology.

Nice comparison. Man oh man. Let me ask, have you been to a holocaust memorial to see what your ancestors did to people? You had some sick bastards running your country. And you think they were thinking about saving lives and were "constructive"?

Japan did some horrific things in WWII, so did the Germans, Russians and even the Americans are not totally innocent.

Why do people insist on constantly looking at the past all the time? Do you live in the past or are too scared to look to the future. All the time I hear Americans going on about Pearl Harbour...geez, it was 60 years ago, get over it. Australia was bombed by Japan but no-one talks about it anymore because it is the past.

Yes acknowledge what happened and learn from it, but look to the future. Japan is a different country now and doesn't need constant reminders of something very bad that it did in the past.

How would you feel if someone constantly reminded you of something you did in the past?

Why do people keep focusing on the past? Ummm...have you ever read a history book or had a history class? Pretty standard to remember what happened in the past, analyze it, and use the information to make more informed decisions in the future.

On that note, I have another question:

I understand that what the Japanese and Germans did to people was horrible, however, I have to question this: If it weren't for those horrific experiments on people, would we have as much knowledge in the medical field? WWII is somewhat of a paradox.

I read history books all the time and am very much interested in history as it shapes the world we live in today. But I try to look to the future as much as possible because the past is the past.

The problem is that we humans repeat our mistakes continually. If we had really learnt from the past, then there wouldn't be wars today would there?

You are right though, war is a paradox in many ways. We wouldn't have great airplanes today if it weren't for the developments brought about during wars. Japan woudn't be a such a good country today if it wasn't for being beaten to a pulp in WWII.

I totally agree with you on the point that Japanese unleashed unbelievable hell in China and other occupied areas, and that there shall be no mercy for those in charge. However, honestly, I did not know much particularly about Unit 731 and read the above article with great interest.

But Hiroshima/Nagasaki is a different story (discussed extensively in other threads) and I don't think messing up or trying to logically connect these two historical facts is right here. That's all.

You've noticed I post with Polish flag. Yes, I live in the country where holocaust took place, and I live in the city that Hitler tried to wipe out from the map. I have seen the (preserved) death camps in Auschwitz, Birkenau, Majdanek and Treblinka (only memorial here). If you see my profile you'll know that I have something Japanese in me too.

I am not an expert though, so I don't feel quite competent in teaching lessons on history. If you have something to add, I am open to learn things, but please do not write like "Hahaha, I was always right, and you bunch of stupid *, shut up an listen!", for I don't think this kind of attitude you tend to present encourages to reply constructively.

Events like this happen only when you are able to fully dehumanize the enemy in your mind, as history has shown that the Japanese were able to do in WWII.

I don't really care who was the first to use WMDs, as that is a silly term fit for TV newsbites of fluff. Trying to develop methods of using the bubonic plague as a weapon is abhorrent, just like slaughtering 30,000 people in a day with calvary, cannon, and infantry were in centuries past.

Quoting Ariis (reply 23):But Hiroshima/Nagasaki is a different story (discussed extensively in other threads) and I don't think messing up or trying to logically connect these two historical facts is right here. That's all.

Ariis, I agree, two completely different arguments and scenarios.

My contention here is that there are some A-Net members who were very very quick to totally condemn the US and it's use of Nuclear Weapons in WW2, but have made absolutely no comment about Japans torture of Chinese citizens and in particular about this thread topic.

Now, when someone decides in the future to declare me hypocritical etc, I will remind them of this thread, post the appropriate link and as them to make comment, just to see who the real hypocrite happens to be.